ARMA's great. I used to train according to their "method" back when they were HACA. Even corresponded a bit with Clements, though I doubt he'd remember me.

But depending on your location, there are other good groups out there. There's the Chicago Swordplay Guild in... er, CHicago. There's AEMMA up in Canada. Just off the top of my head. There's more of course, if you do the looking.

This is the first time I've heard of ARMA. How is it different from Eastern fighting styles? What does it emphasize?

We generally refer to what we do as "historical fencing" which is really a much more complete fighting system than most people realize, very different from any modern sport fencing decended from it. It includes fighting with all manner of close combat weapons such as swords, daggers, and pole arms, as well as various kampfringen (combat wrestling) techniques. ARMA is about reconstructing medieval and renaissance fighting arts of European origin. Most people don't even realize that the western world had sophisticated, methodical fighting arts, taught by professional masters that were every bit as effective and well developed as anything coming from the Orient. The term "martial arts" usually evokes thoughts of Karate, Kung Fu, or other Asian arts, but obviously, "martial" is a western term, with it's origin in the name Mars, the Roman god of war. It's clear that the west has a martial tradition going back thousands of years, unfortunately, with the invention of modern weapons like firearms, much of it was no longer taught or practiced. We are trying to develop a realistic and effective reconstruction of these arts, both unarmed and with weapons, as a modern discipline. There's a lot of good info on the website, I recommend you browse around. Here's an intro article: http://www.thearma.org/about.htm

I think he means because there are people who nut-ride clements and everything he does.

However how is this different than any MA school?

ARMA is just a much much bigger organization than a small school so you are going to have more than one or two people that do it. I'd be willing to bet you have the same proportion of nut-riders of the "teacher" or "head" of the school/style in any organization or school any of us have trained with too.

A "cult" would be where the person encourages this and says "do as I say regardless of how stupid it seems". I don't see clements telling you to pretend to be the black knight and block the GW bridge with a greatsword "none shall pass"
-quite the contrary I think he would kick that person's ass for bieng such a jackass.

The focus of ARMA is on what actually works, not what clements says works but can't be proven through sparring.

Do you ever practise the material in Hans Talhoffer's manual? I was practising it with my friend who helped do a translation of it about 30 years ago.

Yes, he is certainly considered one of the most important of the German Masters. Actually, Talhoffer wrote three manuscripts dated 1443, 1459, and 1467, covering just about every aspect of the combat of the period, including seige weapons and whacky looking inventions of all kinds. His material is difficult to use on it's own, he doesn't provide much explaination on how to perfom the techniques. After studying other German masters such as Johanes Lichtenauer and Sigmund Ringeck, who explain techniques and principles in more detail, Talhoffer's material makes a lot more sense to me and appears to be at least somewhat similar to other German masters.

help!

can some one help me here. i am playing arma armed assult on pc and and i tried to download an addon but didnt work , it says complete but dosent work , is it maybe something to do with the version , like, 1.1 , 1.2 , 1.3 etc , can you please help me.